


we should be a settled argument

by JennaCupcakes



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, M/M, PWP, boot kink, the rituals are intricate etc.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:40:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28758972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then the captains attempt to resolve their differences by other means, in a manner of speaking.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 29
Kudos: 65
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	we should be a settled argument

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Dessa's [Half of You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0SWzMHRD0Q). For my Terror bingo square ‘blowjob’. 
> 
> I can't begin this without first acknowledging the greatest Fitzier boot kink fic, [bang it up inside](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27247393) by TomBowline. I'm a different man since I read that fic.

“He’s here.”

At the sound of the voice, James looked up from his logbook just long enough to catch sight of Dundy moving back down the passageway. Managing a ship full of men was nothing new to them—even if the number of men was—and it was due to their rapport that the fact they had to do it entirely on their own didn’t prove unmanageable. If formality between them slipped a little as a result, James was more than willing to allow it in exchange for a ship that otherwise functioned as it should. Dundy was performing miracles on a daily basis.

With a reluctance that was only partly justified by the impending meeting, James set his logbook aside. The task still felt strange to him, like playing at his uncle’s business with Will in Robert Conningham’s study while the man was out. But this—James knew he was good at this. He had lied about his provenance, his length of service and a number of other issues, but this he knew: he had a talent for leadership. He was affable, which made him popular with the men, and his experience in extreme situations had trained a good instinct in him. It wasn’t his fault that—

Footsteps in the passageway again. James closed his eyes; allowed himself just one more moment slumped over in his chair before he sat up, straightening out the creases in his uniform, as well as the worry-lines on his face. He was less concerned about presentability, and more concerned about cracks in his armor. It wouldn’t do to go into battle ill-prepared.

Francis Crozier always entered the room like he expected James to congratulate him on his mere presence. There was a petulance to him, the childishness that came, as James had learnt, with the drink. Hard to believe a scant two months ago, James had cried like a child in front of that man over the loss of Franklin. Francis’s astonishing, embarrassing downward spiral had confirmed James’s worst fears about him, and at the same time placed the responsibility of ensuring their success firmly on James’s own shoulders.

“Francis.” James gave him the politest nod he could manage. “Good of you to come.”

He was halfway to meaning it.

Francis mumbled something like a greeting. He usually arrived smelling of whiskey already, and today was no different. In moments like these, James wanted nothing more than to throw up his hands and ask Francis what precisely he was doing here if he was not interested in running this expedition. _If it’s so horrible, leave it to me_ , he’d say, _go back to Terror and drink yourself to death in peace_. Unlike Francis, however, he had some shreds of civility left.

“Shall we?”

James had learnt quite a lot about the Arctic over the course of the last two winters. The first winter, when they were frozen in on Beechey, he had learnt something about the danger of boredom during an Arctic winter—the lethargy that set in under complete darkness, and the dread that compounded it when death entered the scene. During their second winter he’d learnt endurance. Their third winter, it seemed, was out to teach him the meaning of forbearance.

He knew by now the ins and outs of shoring up the ships against the ice, of the preparations that had to be taken above deck and below. And yet Francis still dictated measures in the same tone of voice he’d used when instructing James on the operation of his dipping needle back in 1845—a haughty, miserable, grating tone that dripped with self-pity. When James spoke, he had an absent look in his eyes. No doubt the alcohol was to blame for that.

Their meetings always ended the same: Francis, hands clutched into tight fists on the table, would smile a pained smile. “I trust that’s all there is for now?” he’d ask, and mostly, James would let him go.

It was only sometimes, when he felt particularly petty, that he’d exact his own bit of revenge.

“I’ve asked Bridgens to set a dinner for us in the wardroom. Won’t you join me?”

Francis glared at him—he had eyes that seemed cut from the unyielding glaciers that surrounded them, James thought. They were of a shade of blue that people composed poems about. Pity that Francis Crozier was not a man who inspired poetry.

“Of course,” Francis said with a brief flash of teeth. He never looked so much like a cornered animal as in those moments.

They relocated to the wardroom. Only half of the candles were lit, a measure to preserve oil. It plunged the room into a sombre darkness. Dundy was still on duty, pulling his second or third shift—James could no longer remember. He’d have to tell him to sleep eventually.

He watched Francis struggle through most of the meal, cutting into his portioned with a pained precision. That was fine and well and indeed it did still some of the cruel instinct James had felt—watching Francis gulp down his allsopp’s while the shaking of his hands betrayed his need for something stronger. What wouldn’t James give for the moment that he could make Francis feel as small as Francis had always made him feel.

“I see you’ve settled into your new cabin.”

James’s eyes snapped to Francis’s face, but there was nothing on it except the same bleak distaste he always turned towards James. Still, James felt his face flush hotly—he’d wondered if it was tasteless, premature perhaps, of him to move into Sir John’s cabin, but he was the captain now and as such, he had an image to uphold. Besides, it wasn’t like Sir John could still make use of the cabin. It all seemed perfectly reasonable until Francis turned his disapproving gaze on it.

“Yes, I thought it best—”

“Did you even wait a week, I wonder. Or were you so eager for the captaincy that you couldn’t even wait that long?”

That was a cruel reversal of how things had been. After all, Francis had seen James, had seen his tears and anger at Sir John’s death even as he ordered Fairholme’s party out. And yet he had the gall to upbraid James for a lack of propriety. James sneered.

“No less eager than you were to take command.”

Francis fixed his eyes on James. They used to scare him, James thought, with their capacity for piercing the heart of him, but drink had turned even that quality into a pallid shadow of itself. Francis’s gaze kept slipping off to the side, unable to look James in the eye for long.

“Don’t pretend you wouldn’t jump at the chance to take command.” Francis’s voice sounded sour like whiskey. He knew James had caught him out, then.

James watched him as he reached for a glass that was long empty, fiddling with the cut-crystal stem of it. Almost obscene, to put something so delicate and fine between Francis’s blunt, thick sailor’s fingers.

“I didn’t say that,” James said carefully. Foolish, perhaps, but he was tired of tip-toeing around it, tired of pretending that Francis’s command of the expedition was sound and that James trusted his decisions.

At that, Francis scoffed. The smile was back on his face, that toothy joyless thing with one eyebrow raised mockingly. James wondered what sort of treatment would wipe that smirk off Francis’s face.

“Oh?” Francis asked, his amusement a thing that cut, “And what post would I hold on this expedition, were you to command it?”

James couldn’t contain the twitch of his lips that betrayed his thoughts. He waited a moment longer before he let his appraising glance flicker over Francis’s body—the sort of look that Francis had levelled against him in the past—to take it all in: the shaking hands, the red, turgid face, the stink of alcohol on him.

“Like this?” he said, then shook his head. “None whatsoever, until you curb your drinking.”

He’d meant it to sting—cruel, perhaps, but not crueller by any measure than Francis had been towards him in the past. If Francis was so free with his opinion of James’s shortcomings, why shouldn’t James be?

“You speak out of turn,” Francis said coldly.

“Do I?” James felt the courage that came with anger—a bad advisor, but also one that brought the satisfaction he’d been craving. “I think you hide behind rank to disguise the fact that your record on this expedition is middling at best. You wouldn’t even be fit to polish my boots in this state.”

There was a moment—no more than the span of a pulse of blood in James’s veins—when Francis’s eyes flickered _down._

He recovered presently, and met James’s gaze with a livid shine to his eyes, hands clenched at his sides. A man who was not known for his penchant for action over words might not have down what James did next, but James had always let curiosity drive him on in place of good sense.

James uncrossed his legs and folded one over the other so that the boot on his foot was now pointing towards Francis. He watched as Francis, gaze downcast, swallowed, and thought, _well_.

“Of course, if a man were to show good conduct…” He let the words hang in the air, sounding the depth for him. Francis didn’t move, as though caught in a snare. “I might reward him.”

Francis still didn’t move, but one finger was now drumming ceaselessly against the wood of the table. He avoided James’s eyes like it was a sport: his gaze was fixed to a spot just to the left of him.

There was only one way from here: forward. No way either of them could unhear what had been said, or unsee what had been seen. James slowly uncrossed his legs, then planted his foot on the edge of Francis’s chair, just above the man’s crotch. He watched Francis swallow thickly, then—finally, slowly—look up, as though charting a path up James’s body with his eyes.

James had stood at this particular ledge a number of times before, often enough that the brief sense of vertigo felt familiar. The thing that let him forge on was the look in Francis’s eyes—there was a flicker of something wide-eyed there that bared its throat to James.

He pressed his sole down.

Francis’s hands flew up to James’s ankle to grasp at him—not to push James off, he realised, but to anchor himself through the shudder that wracked his body. He looked—he looked, James thought, almost betrayed, as though he was offended by his body’s reaction. Their eyes met, and Francis licked his lips before opening his mouth like he was going to say something. He didn’t.

James tilted his foot forward, rubbing his toes over the flaccid length of Francis’s prick. He wondered if the man could still get it up, and decided that it didn’t matter—seeing Francis like this, his bloodless face and parted lips, was triumph enough.

Francis’s hand flexed around James’s ankle, shifting over the leather of the boot. When James pressed forward again, this time more intently, Francis shuddered, and his eyes slipped shut. A strained _“Christ, James,”_ escaped his thin mouth.

His hips started moving, meeting the rhythmic press of James’s boot. The light of the lamps caught James’s monogram on the side of it every once in a while—a pretty sight, a sordid sight.

James would have scoffed at Francis’s desperation. Surely it showed the truth of his pathetic nature that James had suspected all along. As he watched Francis, James found instead that it excited him: His own prick was firming in his trousers, twitching with every shift of Francis’s fingers around his ankle. Francis had strong hands, a firm grip. James wondered what those hands might feel like around his prick.

He sat up abruptly, removing his foot.

“Come here.”

He motioned towards himself brusquely—his voice sounded hoarse, like a dry wind had ripped all the moisture from his throat, and he coughed, once.

Francis looked like he was going to protest. His hands lay open on his legs now, palms upturned, where they had held James’s ankle moments before. The emptiness of them left him looking bereft. James wondered what he would do if Francis pulled back now, if he gave in to the cowardly instinct. It might be a welcome excuse to rid himself of his troublesome second.

But Francis came.

James spread his legs. Francis stepped between them like he might move on the ice, careful where he put his feet. James couldn’t take his eyes off him, but Francis kept his firmly fixed on James’s hands. He lowered himself to his knees at a meaningful gesture from James. Even seated before James, he still held himself with a certain dignity—born, perhaps, from the knowledge that he was dragging James down with him in this debasement.

“I might have known,” he said in that quiet, raspy voice of his, “that this was what all that peacocking was about.”

James rolled his eyes even as he felt the tingling in his gut, the heat of the excitement. “Oh, do shut up, Francis.”

He brought his boot back to Francis’s crotch as he unfastened his trousers. Francis gasped most satisfyingly, dropping his gaze and bracing himself on James’s knees. He looked like a penitent seated at James’s feet, head bent as though in prayer. James pulled his own prick free of his trousers, gave it a couple of perfunctory squeezes, but the image of Francis on his knees had him harder than he cared to admit, dripping fluid all over himself in his excitement.

He took care to time his strokes with his caresses of Francis’s prick, which was, despite all expectations to the contrary, growing hard under the careful attention of James’s boot. James fitted his free hand under Francis’s chin. He forced the man’s face upwards, forced him to meet his eyes.

In the past, James would have drawn out this moment. He would have liked to see if he could get Francis begging before he finally fed him his prick. Here and now, however, the bustling ship around their sanctuary of the wardroom was a threat that could pierce their bubble at any moment.

“Alright, open up,” James said, the tone of his voice more disaffected than he felt. It had a wonderful effect on Francis, however, who glared at James like he would over one of James’s stories even as he opened his mouth in willing supplication. James guided him down, fed him the head and then let him work, settling back in his chair. Francis took it too fast, choked on it before he was halfway down James’s prick, and James slammed a fist on the table as his vision whited out for a second at the feeling of Francis’s throat convulsing around him.

“Sl-slowly now.” James swallowed thickly. He fought to get his voice under control. “I’ll show you.”

He wound a hand into Francis’s hair; observed with distaste that it trembled as he did so. Francis glared and glared, a resentful student, but he let James guide him with a hand to the back of his neck, James’s thumb resting against his cheek.

Oh but this was exquisite. James’s vision was swimming; he felt like he’d lost all sensation in his legs and arms. He was aware of his body only where his stiff prick disappeared over and over again into Francis’s thin red mouth. He’d meant to take his pleasure from Francis’s humiliation, from seeing the man brought low and putting an end to his incessant griping for once, but watching him now—eyes shut in concentration, chest heaving as he focussed on taking James’s prick—James felt something soften and crack inside him.

He’d been too long alone, if he got soft at a man sucking his prick, especially if that man was Francis bloody Crozier.

Francis’s breath was hot and unsteady on James’s prick when he breathed out through his nose. There was something like a whine sitting at the back of his throat, forced out with every touch of James’s boot or shove of his prick. He wouldn’t look at James kindly while discussing expedition business, but he’d take this; James’s prick and control of his pleasure, even as he seemed at war with himself in his submission. Would that they were in the great cabin, James would bend Francis over the table, spread him out across the map from Baffin Bay to King William Island, fill those thrice-damned white spots that had brought them here. He’d take Francis like he deserved it. He’d make him squirm on his prick.

Christ, he was close.

He let go of Francis’s head, his arm suddenly too heavy to hold. He fumbled for Francis’s wrist where Francis was bracing himself on James’s leg, and to his surprise, Francis turned his own hand and clumsily took James’s. He squeezed it, once. James only had time to blurt out a desperate _“Francis”_ before his prick pulsed and he spurted down Francis’s throat—once, twice, thrice; his vision swam, and he had to focus on keeping himself upright as he emptied himself into Francis’s mouth. Francis kept a firm hold of James’s hand. James could feel the man’s blunt thumb draw calming patterns on the back of it. It made him shudder.

He’d thought he knew how this would go. He hadn’t known the half of it.

As soon as he could see again, he hauled Francis up by his waistcoat, his prick still free and dripping obscenely. He pressed his lips to Francis’s without thinking—Francis muttered half a word, _“Ja—”,_ interrupted before he could finish. James smothered it with his tongue, probing forward in search of more warmth inside Francis, and Francis opened his mouth. His arse hit the edge of the table as James walked him backwards, pressing their bodies together.

James had learnt hunger over the course of their winters, or he thought he had: reduced rations and strict schedules, the monotony of the ever-same fare. This wasn’t Iraq, where Dundy could supply them with more pork than they could ever eat through his musketry exercises. It was a new world to James. But he never could have guessed how much he’d miss this—how much he’d hanker after the warmth of another body, someone alive and breathing under him. Even if Francis was kissing him like an argument, even if his fingers, no doubt, pressed bruises into James’s sides, he was still _kissing_ James.

James tore his mouth away, breathing heavily. He urged Francis to turn around; put a hand to the nape of his neck to bend him over the table. He crowded behind Francis, softening prick pressing against the cleft of Francis’s arse. A shudder ran through him at the pressure, delicious now that it was very nearly too much. Francis keened.

“Is that what you want?” All of a sudden, the image was clear in James’s mind: Francis, bent over the table, James’s fingers up his arse. Oh but he’d not thought to hope for this—he’d imagined bringing Francis off with his hand, bent low over the table. Nothing more. Nothing like—he seized one of Francis’s buttocks in his hand. “Is that what you want, Francis?”

Francis—who’s prick was achingly hard in James’s hand when he groped around for it—made a choked-off sound of pleasure. “Damn you, James. _Damn you_.”

James felt along the firm length of his prick. A fine instrument and a miserable man. He might have laughed, if Francis hadn’t groaned at a particularly tight squeeze and struck the table with his fist. “Do it, then, before I— _ah, Christ_ —before I die of old age.”

James unbuttoned him with efficiency. When he rucked up Francis’s shirt, it revealed a pale, lovely arse, tightly muscled, that invited one to sink one’s teeth into the meat of it. James groped the cheeks by way of a compromise, massaging them with self-assured strokes until Francis was groaning anew. James found he couldn’t get enough of that sound.

He groped around for one of the unlit lamps, scooping some oil onto his fingers. Francis’s breath hitched when James slipped a finger between his buttocks, tracing the shape of the opening there. He widened his stance.

A jolt went through his body when James pushed his index finger inside. James could feel the tensing in his muscles and brought his other hand up to press gently at Francis’s lower back, to soothe and anchor the skittish animal of him. It was good—Francis relaxed under his touch and James could probe deeper with every push of his finger. Francis’s breath hitched wetly where his face pressed against the table.

“There you are. Let me open you up now,” James muttered, “Let me fuck you open.”

“Don’t you ever— _ah_.” Francis interrupted himself when James pushed in again. His muscles clenched frantically around James’s digit. “Don’t you ever shut up?”

James, feeling vindictive, placed a second finger at Francis’s opening. “Has no one taught you gratitude for what you’re given?”

He didn’t leave Francis time to respond. The second finger filled him beautifully: James watched both of them disappear into Francis with the banked fire of satisfaction in his chest. Francis’s mouth stood open but no sound came out—with his eyes open and fixed on a distant point he looked nothing but shocked as James speared him open.

He looked beautiful.

James very nearly told him—the words were already on the tip of his tongue, preparing to take flight before James remembered himself. He bit his tongue, and reapplied himself to his task.

He’d never be able to rid himself of this image: Francis, stout and masculine, now pale and sweating while speared on James’s fingers. He might have been too proud to beg in so many words, but James was adept at reading a man’s body. Francis was desperate for it as a midshipman newly back on shore after a lengthy commission. He wondered if Francis had let anyone touch him like this before, or if it was only now, deeper in drink and farther from civilization than ever before, that he allowed himself the weakness of this vice. Surely he’d hate James for this when he sobered up—but what did it matter when James had him now?

A twist of his fingers had Francis bring his fist to his mouth, biting his sleeve. His chest was rising and falling with quick little hysteric breaths, his muscles clenching around James’s fingers. He levelled a gaze at James that very nearly managed to look convincingly outraged when James angled his fingers so that they struck him again and again in the spot that saw Francis trembling desperately beneath his hand. He choked on his indignance when James swiftly pressed in another finger, holding Francis open with three of them now. Francis moaned, unable to hold back any longer.

“It’s not enough, is it?”

James could see Francis’s need in the pinched set of his brow. He’d been without it for so long—James couldn’t envision Francis keeping to any habit of self-abuse—that his prick must be aching intolerably by now, heavy and painful with the need to spend.

“You want my hand on your prick. You want me to touch you. Bring you off.”

He stilled in the incessant movement of his fingers for a moment; savoured the clench of muscles and pulse of blood around them. Francis groaned—his forehead thumped against the wood of the table and the thrust his hips back into James’s fingers. James pursed his lips.

“Too bad. This is all you’re getting.”

Francis half turned, a familiar snarl on his face, but James took up his pistoning again and Francis apparently decided to shelve his protestations. His whole body was trembling. Close.

“Come now, Francis. You were so ready to come all over my boots earlier. Perhaps I’ll let you do that next time.”

An incredulous whimper, a tight squeeze of Francis’s muscles. There were wet stains on his cheek—he was crying, James realised, and still fucking himself on James’s fingers, the very picture of conflicted pleasure.

“I’ll make you lick them clean,” he whispered, shoved his fingers in deep as they would go, and then Francis was crying out, muscles spasming and prick twitching, covering the table in thick white ropes that stained his shirt and belly. His moans tapered off into whimpers as James kept slowly pushing his fingers into him, coaxing every last drop of spend from him until Francis was breathing in unsteady hiccupping breaths and begging. _“Please, James, please—”_

James withdrew his fingers and stepped back. The silence around them rang inordinately loud now that the moans had ceased and the rush of blood in James’s ears was subsiding. He could hear the faint sounds of the men again, the voices and steps and bustling of a ship that somehow still existed around them.

He looked to Francis, who had begun dressing himself stiffly, back turned to James. He had fumbled out a handkerchief and was dabbing at his eyes and cheeks.

He should say something. Perhaps this had started as a way of settling a long overdue argument between them, but Francis had _entrusted_ James with something—

And what would he say?

This was the crux of it: he’d tried it all on Francis already. It was how they had ended up here in the first place. Francis would only rebuff him again. He wouldn’t be a friend to James; certainly nothing more than that.

Francis turned once he was fully dressed again—no cracks in his armour. The state of James’s own uniform was a whole lot sorrier.

“Thank you for dinner, Commander Fitzjames.”

His cheeks were still red and marked by the tears he’d cried. He stood with a stiffness for which James wanted to take at least partial credit. He stared James down like he was daring him to remark upon it.

“You’re welcome, Francis,” James said. And, because he couldn’t help himself. “I hope we’ll repeat it very soon.”

The look that crossed Francis’s face very nearly made him regret it.

“Good day,” Francis said curtly. He turned on the spot and was out of the wardroom before James could think of a suitable response, something to soften the blow of the cruelties he’d spat at Francis. Then again, did he want to?

James sank back into the chair. There was little worse, he thought, than the realisation that he’d gotten exactly what he’d hoped for, and it hadn’t been what he’d wanted at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving me a comment. 
> 
> I’m also on on [tumblr](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/veganthranduil) as veganthranduil.


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